Former President Donald Trump's workers at Mar-a-Lago reportedly moved boxes of classified documents just a day before federal prosecutors came to collect papers pursuant to a subpoena.
The two Trump employees, including longtime valet Walt Nauta, brought boxes of documents to a basement storage room on June 2, just hours before Justice Department officials came to the Florida resort to execute the subpoena, The Washington Post reported Thursday.
The paper also said Special Counsel Jack Smith has evidence that Trump kept classified materials in open view in his office at Mar-a-Lago and sometimes showed the documents to visitors.
The new report did not say what Trump's goal might have been in moving documents into the storage room as officials prepared to retrieve classified documents.
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Trump's lawyers allowed investigators to see boxes in the store room but not look inside them.
Whatever the reasons, moving documents after receiving a subpoena would amount to evidence of obstruction of justice.
Showing classified documents to unauthorized third parties as Trump is suspected of doing could violate the Espionage Act and laws covering handling of classified information.
The report also says that Trump workers carried out a so-called "dress rehearsal" for moving classified documents from one place to another at Mar-a-Lago even before the former president was hit in May 2022 with a subpoena to return all of them.
Nauta and the other Mar-a-Lago worker have already been questioned by prosecutors, but are apparently not cooperating witnesses for the prosecution.
Other reports say that at least one Trump insider who worked at Mar-a-Lago has flipped on Trump and is working with prosecutors but it's not known who that is or how senior a figure they might be.
After the June 3 visit by prosecutors, federal officials believed Trump had not returned all of the classified documents as required by the subpoena.
A federal judge granted a search warrant and FBI agents found more than 100 additional documents in the storage room and elsewhere at Mar-a-Lago.
The report comes as the grand jury hearing evidence in the documents case has not met in three weeks, its longest break since Smith took over the probe last year.
Several published reports say Smith is in the final stages of the documents case and is expected to decide whether to charge Trump within a matter of a few weeks at the longest.
Trump's lawyers sent an angry letter demanding a meeting with Attorney General Merrick Garland to try to derail the probe, a sign that they believe a decision is near.
Smith is separately investigating Trump's effort to overturn his loss in the 2020 election, which culminated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Timeline: Key dates in the investigation into Trump's Mar-a-Lago docs
December 2021
NARA "continued to make requests" for records it believed to be missing for several months, according to the affidavit. Around late December 2021, a Trump representative informed the agency that an additional 12 boxes of records that should have been turned over had been found at the former president's Mar-a-Lago club and residence and were ready to be retrieved.
Jan. 18, 2022
NARA received 15 boxes of presidential records that had been stored at Mar-a-Lago — 14 of which, it would later be revealed, contained classified documents. The documents were found mixed in with an assortment of other material, including newspapers, magazines, photos and personal correspondence.
In total, the boxes were found to contain 184 documents with classified markings, including 67 marked confidential, 92 secret and 25 top secret. Agents who inspected the boxes also found special markings suggesting they included information from highly sensitive human sources or the collection of electronic "signals" authorized by a court under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Feb. 19, 2022
NARA revealed in a letter to a congressional oversight committee that classified information was found in the 15 recovered boxes and confirmed the Justice Department referral.
Trump's Save America PAC released another statement insisting, "The National Archives did not 'find' anything," but "were given, upon request, Presidential Records in an ordinary and routine process to ensure the preservation of my legacy and in accordance with the Presidential Records Act."
April 12, 2022
NARA informed Trump of its intent to provide the documents to the FBI, at the request of the Justice Department. A Trump representative requested an extension until April 29.
May 10, 2022
NARA informed Trump's lawyers that it would provide the FBI access to the records as soon as May 12.
May 11, 2022
The Justice Department issued a subpoena for additional records.
June 8, 2022
The Justice Department sent a letter to Trump's lawyer requesting that the storage room be secured, and that "all of the boxes that were moved from the White House to Mar-a-Lago (along with any other items in that room) be preserved in that room in their current condition until farther notice."
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